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Sunday, March 17, 2013

Blown Away by The Nora Theatre Company's Production of "Operation Epsilon" at The Central Square Theater

Today marked my first visit to theCentral Square Theateron Massachusetts Avenue in
Cambridge. It will not be my last visit. The occasion that lured me
to Central Square was aWorld
Premiereperformance ofProfessor Alan Brody'sgroundbreaking play,"Operation
Epsilon." This was also my first opportunity to see a play
produced by one of the two resident theater companies,The Nora Theatre Company.
The moment I walked into the auditorium and took my seat, I knew that I was in
for a memorable afternoon of theater. The building is a world class,
state-of-the-art facility. Central Square Theater is a unique
collaboration between two non-profit professional theater companies –The Nora Theatre Company (The Nora)
and Underground Railway Theater (URT)–
with a combined track record of 50 years of excellence in producing theater and
educational programming for the Greater Boston community.

The seats were
comfortable, the theater was filled with a multi-generational mix of theater aficionados
abuzz with anticipation. In the few moments before the action of the play
commenced, I was able to feast my eyes on the sumptuous set that had been
designed by award winningJanie
E. Howland. First class all the way.

The play has an
interesting pedigree. It arose from conversations
that had taken place beginning in 2004 among Professor Brody and other denizens
of his regular Salon. For most of the
past decade, the playwright/professor and colleague Alan Lightman ran informal monthly gatherings of scientists and
playwrights on the MIT campus. They
dubbed the gatherings “The Science on
Stage Salons.” Brody began to
investigate the history of the detention of Germany’s top physicists following
the surrender of the German forces in 1945.
A key source for his ideas in the play came from his reading and
research of Jeremy Bernstein’s“Hitler’s Uranium Club: The Secret
Recordings at Farm Hall,” based on transcripts of bugged conversations
among ten of Germany’s top nuclear scientists while they were being held as
prisoners of war at a mansion in the British countryside at the close of World
War II. Early staged readings of the
play have been performed over the past few years, and this fully staged version
and World Premiere was developed through Catalyst Collaborative@MIT,
an initiative that believes that science and the arts can, and must, work
together.

(Spoiler Alert: Some plot elements revealed below)

The play
is a revelation on many levels. The
scientists were held captive for six months in England in hopes that the
British would be able to learn secrets from eavesdropping on the conversations. How much had the Germans learned about the
Americans' efforts to build an atomic bomb?
How close had Germany come to creating such a weapon?

In the
hands of a less adroit playwright and a less gifted ensemble cast, the subject
matter could have felt pedantic and arcane.
This was not the case. The
audience sat riveted as initially the scientists swapped theories about isotope
separation, heavy water, Uranium isotope half-lives and complex formulae. As the play and the six months of
incarceration progressed, the discussions became more heated and at the same
time more philosophical. How could these
brilliant scientists, including two eventual Nobel laureates, rehabilitate
their reputations after having served the Third Reich and Hitler? What could they do? What kind of statement could they make? At one point, the action and conversation
became so animated that the physicists seemed like errant electrons colliding
with one another and throwing off sparks.
The level of conversation and conflict took a quantum leap into the
realm of ethics when one of the characters, Dr. Max von Laue, talked about the need for them to
face the painful fact that they had chosen to stay in German and to serve the
Reich. The elephant in the room had been
named, and there is no turning back.

Brody has
written a brilliant play that jumps back and forth between scientific minutiae and
broad ethical issues. The conflicting
personalities, philosophies, value systems and levels of personal ambition
finally reach critical mass, and all hell breaks loose. Each character is developed so that we sense
their individuality shining through their corporate guilt and shame. With the ambitious Dr. Werner Heisenberg at
the nucleus of the action, it is no wonder that the group’s future and course
of action is fraught with uncertainty!

The
dramatic arc of the story makes the audience members wish that they had
fastened tightly their proverbial emotional seat belts.
There is a touching moment near the end of the second act in which there takes place a stunning
reconciliation between Carl-Friederich Von Weizsacker, a young maverick disciple of Dr. Heisenberg, and von Laue, an older
maven whom he has despised and abused for more than six months. Just when it feels that this complex tale will
end on a high note, a letter arrives from a Jewish colleague who had escaped to
Sweden before the worst atrocities of the Holocaust. Expecting congratulations on winning the Nobel Prize, Dr. Otto Hahn is
stunned when he reads a scathing “j’accuse”
screed excoriating him and his colleagues for sharing blame with Hitler for the
atrocities of the Third Reich by their inaction and failure to protest what
they knew were inhuman abuses being perpetrated. Blackout!

The play
artfully raises complex moral questions for which there are no simple
answers. In a poignant exchange between their
British captor, Major Rittner and Heisenberg, the scientist exclaims: “If you
think the truth is that simple, you’ve been around the Americans too long!”

Under the inspired direction of Andy Sandberg, the cast members are universally professional and plausible.

They are:

Barlow Adamson as Major Rittner

Diego Arciniegas as Heisenberg

Ken Baltin as von Laue

Owen Doyle as Kurt Diebner

Kendall Hodder as Erich Bagge

Jon Kool as Karl Wirz

Will Lyman as Otto Hahn

Ross MacDonald as Horst Korschling

Allan Mayo as Paul Harteck

Robert D. Murphy as Walther Gerlach

Dan Whelton as von Weizsacker

The audience today included a number of
budding scientists - MIT students who had been urged to attend the play and to
write about their reactions to the issues.
It is encouraging to see science and art co-mingling so forcefully on the
MIT campus. How fitting it is that this
examination of ethics and science should take place only 0.4 miles (according
to Google Maps!) from the building that houses MIT’s own nuclear reactor lab.

This play
should be considered a “Must See.” I
expect that it will have opportunities to grow beyond the confines of Cambridge
to challenge audiences worldwide.

About Me

As the Founder of White Rhino Partners, I work as an executive coach and an executive recruiter. Client companies and executive level candidates look to me - not just as a recruiter - but as a trusted advisor. AS a coach, I specialize in helping executives or senior military officers who are in transition. As a recruiter, I specialize in placing senior executives who are "Renaissance Men and Women," and who are entrepreneurial leaders - many of whom have had a distinguished military career and/or are Service Academy graduates and hold MBA's from top-tier business schools.
(View my Profile in the LinkedIn Network at:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/achase)
achase47@whiterhinopartners.com